"Harvard’s Crisis of Faith"

I read this article on Newsweek.com this morning and thought it was worth sharing. There is a debate on Harvard’s campus over whether or not the school should require undergrad students to take at least one class on religion during their time there. Read it here.

It is a helpful reminder of how the secular world views religion in general, and it brings up that wonderful old friend, the false dichotomy between religion and reason. Granted, I had a very hard time understanding the main points because I am closed-minded religious nut, and I don’t use my brain. Couldn’t resist;) Enjoy!

Some highlights:

– Steven Pinker, the evolutionary psychologist, led the case against a religion requirement. He argued that the primary goal of a Harvard education is the pursuit of truth through rational inquiry, and that religion has no place in that.

– In Pinker’s view, human progress is an evolution away from superstition, witchcraft, and idol worship—that is, religion—and toward something like a Scandinavian austerity and secularism. (Pinker is one of those intellectuals who speak frequently about how sensible things are in Europe; one suppresses the urge to remind him of the Muslim riots in the Paris and London suburbs.) A university education is our greatest weapon in the battle against our natural stupidity, he said in a recent speech. “We don’t kill virgins on an altar, because we know that it would not, in fact, propitiate an angry god and alleviate misfortune on earth.”

– Harvard’s distaste for engaging with religion as an academic subject is particularly ironic, given that it was founded in 1636 as a training ground for Christian ministers. According to the office of the president, Veritas was only officially adopted as its motto in 1843; until then it had been Christo et Ecclesiae (“For Christ and the Church”).

– Harvard students are increasingly “churchgoing, Bible-studying, and believing,” says Jay Harris, the dean who administers the General Education program. “We have a very strong evangelical community. We have women walking around in hijabs.” The disinclination of the faculty to bring religion front and center puts teachers at risk of being radically out of step with their students.

– Sophomore, Ryan Mahoney said, “I do not think there would be any openness to discussing God in any of the classes I took last year,” he said. “But acknowledging the fact that religion exists and that it’s not lunacy to believe in God would be helpful.” To dismiss the importance of the study of faith—especially now—out of academic narrow-mindedness is less than unhelpful. It’s unreasonable.

8 comments

The problem as I see it is that people are viewing this as a problem to be solved by taking a vote. If you are a devout believer, you are supposed to favor it. If you are an atheist, you are supposed to oppose it.

But that's crazy. The reason to require a class as part of a liberal education is because the material is essential to understanding Western Civilization.

In other words, the debate shouldn't be construed as a kind of C.S. Lewis vs Richard Dawkins debate about (say) the truth of the Nicene creed. Rather its a debate about the value of a liberal education.

Basically, Pinker (in the article) is a philistine. He doesn't care about art — stories, novels, plays, movies, poetry, paintings, architecture, sculpture, music, opera, pop — none of which can be properly understood without an understanding of the great religious traditions. Art is intimately connected with religion.

Camille Paglia is an atheist I admire, and she has been arguing heatedly for the last 20 years that undergraduate education in America be radically reformed with the study of religion and art at the CENTER of a student's first two years. Not just one flimsy course but two solid years of it.

Even debates in subjects such as economics can have their foundation in theology. For example, it has been argued that peoples decisions regarding their free time (work v. rest) is influenced by their theology. In the early 20th Century, Max Weber's "Protestant Ethics of Capitalism" focused primarily on one's theology of vocation and stewardship and the impact on the work, spending and charity decisions that people make.

For the study of the choices that people make in the face of scarcity, what a major gap it is to miss theology!

In another example, think about eschatology! Wouldn't one think that what someone believes regarding the end of times would have an impact on the choices they make today?

In the vein of what many have already said, it's impossible to talk about the history of Europe without talking about the history of the church, and the (at least) quasi-religious stands that shaped the continent.

I was generally astounded as an undergrad at Harvard how little my friends knew about religion in general, Christianity in particular, and especially the Bible. Almost total biblical illiteracy. Made me wonder how they made sense of almost any and all literature. The phony "reason vs. faith" dichotomy is so tired and silly, except so many people still buy it.I chuckled at Pinker's comment that "human progress is an evolution away from… idol worship." As if. Anyone watched TV lately?

I was also surprised by Pinker's reason against teaching religion. The science and religion field is small producing really interesting and rigorous research, e.g., evolutionary biologists like Marc Hauser (also on faculty at Harvard) are doing studies on the evolution of religion and morality. I know many really intelligent atheists and agnostics who think religion is truly worth studying, and whose work I really respect, because they see religion as so clearly a part of our world (at all levels- personal, social, and global). I don't know what Pinker would mean by "truth" if religion isn't at least phenomologically persistent and, by that definition, something true.

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